Joe McGinniss died Monday of complications from prostate cancer,
and a long, colorful journalistic career came to an end. McGinniss was a magnet
for controversy, from the beginning of his career (he got inside Richard
Nixon's 1968 campaign and came out with a groundbreaking book) to the end (he
moved next door to Sarah Palin in 2010, much to her annoyance). Here are five
memorable books by and about McGinniss:

"The Selling of the President" (1969): McGinniss talked his way
into the Nixon campaign (after Hubert Humphrey turned him down) and wrote about
how electing a president wasn't that different than advertising a product. It's
commonplace now; it was revelatory back then. Fox News czar Roger Ailes, then a
young Nixon aide, plays a prominent role.

"Going to Extremes" (1980): McGinniss went to Alaska and wrote
what he saw: there's a real frontier spirit up north, and there's a lot of
hypocrites who live off government welfare while proclaiming their rugged
individualism. Alaskans were outraged. Edward Abbey called it a brilliant book.

"Fatal Vision" (1983): Here comes trouble. Dr. Jeffrey
MacDonald, accused of killing his wife and children, approached McGinniss and
allowed him access to his defense team. McGinniss came to believe MacDonald was
guilty but didn't say so. MacDonald sued McGinniss, who was forced to make some
embarrassing admissions at the trial. His publisher's insurance company had to
pay, MacDonald remained in prison, but it wasn't over.

"The Journalist and the Murderer" (1990): Janet Malcolm thought
McGinniss was a fraud, a snake who charmed his way into MacDonald's heart. Her
two-part series in The New Yorker, expanded into this book was an indictment of
all journalists with McGinniss as the prime target.

"Every journalist who is not too
stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he
does is morally indefensible," Malcolm wrote.

"The Miracle of Castel di Sangro" (1999): Everywhere he goes,
McGinniss finds a bunch of characters worth writing about. Weird, isn't it? In
this case it's the inhabitants of an Italian village, all crazy mad for soccer.